FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

DOJ Advises Gibson Guitar to Export Labor to Madagascar

It seems that the Department of Justice wasn’t satisfied with merely raiding the law abiding factories of Gibson Guitar with armed agents, shutting down their operation costing them millions, and leaving the American company in the dark as to how to proceed without going out of business.

Now, according to CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, agents of the United States government are bluntly informing them that they’d be better off shipping their manufacturing labor overseas.

CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?

HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: Excuse me?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that it a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: That your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: Yes

So the government attacked them in the first place by citing obscure regulations that probably weren’t violated about importation of wood. Now they are suggesting that all these problems would go away if they simply exported their labor.

Had it simply been said in passing by an agent, one could write it off as a lone sarcastic agent, trying to push buttons. But the fact that they actually wrote it in the pleading is a level of hubris that goes well beyond over zealous law enforcement officials and passes straight into what can easily be translated as an out of control and corrupt targeting of an American corporation.

When President Obama gives his jobs speech next week, let’s hope he has an answer for why our government would want to force and coerce corporations to send jobs overseas.